Thanks. Just a couple more points, mainly to clarify:
A wash trade is when you effectively trade with yourself, not to another market participant who has similar spots who might be acting in an equal but opposite manner to you at a particular point in time. Put another way, I did consider the prospect that the addition of the covering trades might amount to some double-counting, but that would only hold true if wash trading was actually occurring. Being ever the pragmatist my default bias is to presume that illegal practice is not happening in any material way, unless there's clear evidence to the contrary (impossible to prove without access to forensic-grade data).
Yeah, you nailed it in that I'm not a GameStop kind of guy. I thought it was equal parts madness and comedy, which had its roots in en masse boredom associated with mass lockdowns. It made for a great story, though, in which the little guys had a win for once, but for all the wrong reasons (chuckles).
Re- my earlier comments about the possibility of a mundane (boring) unwinding of shorts: I mentioned the mundane angle in the spirit of balance. I was essentially referring to the possibility of several batches (over time) of, for example, what happened during the sideways trading in July & Aug whereby net short interest dropped ~10% without any material uptick in the SP. Extrapolating that into a larger orderly unwinding is eminently doable if the bear market runs for long enough and if there isn't any kind of upward jolting surprise. That said, anything can happen. It's not a game for me. The risks associated with the leverage -- long or short -- don't suit my profile/style.
Finally, for me, the data suggests the bulk of the net short interest is actually longer-term positions, rather than the pips players which we know about. Not a big deal, though.
Cheers.
PLS Price at posting:
$2.88 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)